Perhaps you’ve been nagged by a persistent question, one that you didn’t even know how to form, much less pursue, and for months now, but without knowing why, or even that it was there. Perhaps your question was something like this: I wonder, you might have asked yourself, what the names of the ten best/most important books on ethics are from the last 200 years?
Well you can scratch that itch, now. Here’s the list.
Bonus points for saying how many you’ve read. I’ve got three in their entirety, most of a fourth, and small pieces of a fifth and sixth. And so, I guess I’ve got some more reading to do…
I’m just about tied with you. Three in their entirety (Mill, Nietzsche, Nietzsche), and smallish but critical chunks of four (Rawls, Moore, Marx, Hegel). I’ve barely touched Williams (and couldn’t tell you anything about what he said– was he a naturalist?), and doubt I’ve ever read a word of Sidgwick or Mackie.